The Button; The Pentagon's Strategic Command and Control System

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Third Printing. Trade paperback. Very good. [2], 270, [4] pages. Wraps. Notes. Index. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Black line at bottom edge. The author was the former Executive Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and had been a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded in 1969 by faculty and students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The organization's founding document says it was formed to "initiate a critical and continuing examination of governmental policy in areas where science and technology are of actual or potential significance" and to "devise means for turning research applications away from the present emphasis on military technology toward the solution of pressing environmental and social problems." Derived from a Kirkus review: Ford says that he set out to find out about ""the button"": the thing that enables an American president to retaliate for a Soviet attack. The ability to retaliate is based on communications and control of the nuclear arsenal. The weak link is that satellite-gathered information must be received in one place and transmitted from there to Colorado to be interpreted and collated with other information. Receiving stations are vulnerable to an early attack. Radar tracking stations in Greenland, England, and Alaska are all prime targets for the first Soviet missiles. This leads to strategies of launch on warning or launch on attack, both of which put us on a hair trigger. The alternative to this picture of confusion is to strike first. The system for a president to authorize a first strike is fairly straightforward, entailing a computerized attack plan aimed at the Soviet leadership. Ford believes that DOD is moving us steadily toward a first strike.